1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for optically reading a document model with a scanner and for printing a recording medium with a printer as well as a device with a scanner for optically reading a document model and with a printer for printing a recording medium.
2. Discussion of the Background
Both in the business world and in private life one is often faced with the task of filling out a pre-printed form, for example a tax declaration form or an application for some event. This can be done either by hand, which nowadays is rather inconvenient and involves a lot of effort on the part of the recipient to decipher handwriting which is not always very legible. An improvement is achieved if such forms are completed using a typewriter, if such is available. This is not always the case, above all in the private sphere. Moreover it is not always easy to fill out pre-printed forms with a typewriter since limits are imposed by the form's thickness or spacing and by its format. Moreover it is time-consuming and difficult to position the typewriter precisely on the provided field or lines of the form.
With the widespread use of data processing devices, in particular personal computers and printers, computer users have expressed the wish in recent years to complete forms of the aforementioned kind using a computer and a printer. There is of course the known and often makeshift way of scanning a pre-printed form, a so-called document model, with a scanner and of recording it as a document in the computer. Using a software program, the stored document model can be made visible on a data display unit, in particular a screen, and can be completed there with additional data, or respectively filled in with the required data. Such additional data can be entered in the computer, for example, using a keyboard, and can be added to the displayed document model using a data processing program. The displayed document model with the completed data can be transmitted to a printer, which prints this on a blank sheet of paper, which is usually used as the recording medium. In DE 39 35 713 an image generating device is described which works this way. This has a common control unit as well as a scanner and a printer. The scanner and the printer can be placed on the control unit, and with this device an image can be made of a form by scanning and can be stored in a memory, or a sheet of paper can be printed with data from the memory. The scanner and the printer can be lifted off the control unit and can be operated individually. The subject matter disclosed in this patent document is suitable, through well-aimed operation, for scanning an image or image section from a model and storing it, and printing the stored information in a second, separate step at a very specific location on a sheet of paper, which sheet is not identical to the original document.
It is often required, however, that the original, pre-printed form be completed and returned. This is the case, for example, with tax declaration forms in numerous cantons of Switzerland. Now if one tries to complete an original form with a computer and printer, one is confronted with great difficulties. Even if it seems obvious to develop a software program which allows a scanned original form to be displayed on a screen and to be completed with supplementary data in the desired places, the original form then being fed into the printer, and the printer being so controlled that only the supplementary data are printed, the mentioned difficulties cannot be overcome. Through the double handling of the original form, once during feeding of the form into the scanner and a second time during feeding of the form into the printer, there occurs an almost unavoidable, undesirable mismatch between the form position in the scanner and in the printer. This results in the data completed with the computer not being printed exactly in the place foreseen therefor, but rather offset. This is annoying since either a new form to be filled out must be obtained from the responsible office, or the responsible office receives the imprecisely completed form, which is difficult to read, and which is certainly not readable by machine.